Rooted in being okay.

July 14, 2023 

After work, I sit with an iced espresso outside Le Gout, an Armenian bakery next to the clinic. The day felt steady. My sisters and I flitted in and out of the group chat anxiously. 

R u ok?

Lol yeh. 🙄 

*adds question mark*

I never know how to answer that question. Actually I just don't like the question. 

*Too much silence*

*I apologize*

it's okay I understand. 

DEFINE ok (also OKAY) informal

all right, right, very well, fine, adequate, not bad, in good health, healthy, well, average, reasonable, permissible, allowable, acceptable, suitable. 

What would it take to feel all right? 

Would it--if you are someone especially connected to more subtle essences--require being somewhere all right? That is, in a place free of climbing mounds of trash, free of people with open wounds that are weeping, free of men with stacks of money who do nothing with their wealth other than hoard it away never to see the light of day? 

Perhaps feeling all right merely meant adequate. 

But didn't you want so much more for the people you love? 

In good health felt helpful, as this qualified that okayness was relative to an individual. Good health meant many different things for different folk. When he told you he was okay he could have meant he'd slept three hours the night before, then shuffled papers back and forth all day, perhaps believing it himself when he said "I'm okay". 

Permissible piqued my interest the most. Perhaps it stood to be the most important definition of all. Because that which was permitted inevitably became that which was deemed acceptable. What might be worse than suffering was suffering without knowing it. Right? To first know you are trapped is the only way to become un-trapped. 

[In this case, I had no trouble admitting that suffering did, in fact, abound, but I'd like to lessen it for myself and others]

ok??? So what you let be became okay because you permitted it. 

But do you possess such a power? 

What did we want to be okay? 

Suitable also stood up to the test. This meaning that whatever happened to be in question seemed to fit the subject accompanying it. 

There could have been moments when I wished for something more than okay, but now that I'm writing this, the prospect of okayness conjured a feeling of contented simplicity, a noting of the brilliant beauty of that which is 

average.